My fellow adventurers and I began our northern adventures on Saturday with a flight to Sapporo from Fukuoka. Almost immediately upon landing, we could tell we were no longer on Kyushu; the sun was shinning (well, actually it was more the snow on the ground that gave it away)!!! After a long, overheated train ride into Sapporo proper and a short subway ride followed by an interminable underground trek from the subway to the exit for our hotel (I am pretty sure we walked further than we rode the train) we emerged onto the street in front of Odori Park, where the largest snow sculptures are located. We made a bee-line for our hotel to drop off the bags and put on a few more layers before setting out for some late lunch in "ramen alley." While Kurume/Fukuoka is known for its tonkatsu, or pork based ramen, Sapporo is known for its miso based broth. One local specialty is butter corn ramen, and its as much of a heart attack as it sounds like, but oh so oishii.
Would you look at that big pat of butter!?
Ramen alley was convieniently located in the Susukino district of Sapporo, where all of the ice sculptures were located, allowing us to walk off our lunch while admiring beautifully crafted blocks of ice. Tour guide Jamie helpfully informed us that all the sculptures were made from naturally frozen ice brought in from a lake somewhere on Hokkaido. How did she know? The internet probably, but once we knew what to look for--natural ice is clear, while refrigerator frozen ice is more opaque--we too could see that this was some high quality ice. Jamie also says that there is a man who lives by this lake and makes his living monitoring/extracting/shipping the ice from the lake to Sapporo for the festival.
The ice sculptures came in many styles:
1) Fishy
(Real sea creatures frozen into this one!)
2) Japanese
3) Borderline tacky
and 4) Refreshment related
Sapporo's famous ra-me-n...giant ice bowl with real noodles on top. Weird. Made even weirder because the sign read "Wonderful Sapporo Lamian." Pick up any Japanese-English dictionary and within the first few pages (if not on the inside of the front cover) is a chart that converts hiragana and katakana into the roman alphabet. It's not that hard!
Ooo the Bailey's ice hut. Creative marketing at its very best. Build a small square building out of ice with large bottle outside. Offer small servings of hot Bailey's and milk/coffee at 200 yen a piece. Watch repeat customers come through again and again.
As night fell we made our way back toward the hotel/Odori Park to see the "iruminashion" of the large snow sculptures. The first thing we noticed was not actually made out of snow:
Yet another Japanese city with an impressive T.V. tower. Sapporo felt the need to add a rather large clock to theirs, which provided us with endless "Gee, I wish I knew what time it was," jokes. The tower was at one end of the park, the other end was 12 whole blocks away. In the middle were all of the sculptures as well as some vendors selling "Japanese culture" on a stick, "fried potato" and other carnival faire, plus a huge variety of souveniers--earmuffs, towels, t-shirts, pins, ketai charms, hats, yadda, yadda, yadda. I picked up a few charms to bring back to people in Kurume, but my purchases paled in comparison with Jamie's. Some people buy drugs; Jamie buys Hello Kitty charms. Aware of her addiction, she budgeted 2-man (around $200) for all of the charms she wanted from Hokkaido. Luckily though, she brought extra cash because she ended up spending almost 3-man on over 70 charms (for her own collection as well as for omiyage ). There were so many in fact that she bought a huge lavender Hello Kitty bag to transport them all home in. She wasn't the only person at the airport carrying one however...
Back to the sculptures. There were many of them. I have not included too many pictures because I think this post will be long enough as is. There were maybe 10 really big ones; one was Prince Caspian themed, there was a weird Cup-o-Noodle "Freedom" themed one; a Japanese castle, and a Japan Airlines landmarks of the world one. My favorite was the large eskimo/mammoth/polar bear one. Great use of medium. You can get a sense of its massive size by looking at the shadowy crowd at the bottom of the picture.
There was also a nature-themed ice stage which hosted a piano player in a heated box and some awful local radio personalities. I think it was better off empty and lit from behind as I have captured it below.
Hokkaido is hosting the Toyako G8 Summit in July, which will have a special focus on the environment (I think I should be paying a lot more attention to this than I am) and there were a lot of posters and a few premature welcome signs up in Sapporo this weekend. As one might assume, a festival based completely around snowfall is very concerned about global warming. The theme of this year's festival was "Stop the Global Warming" (soooooo effective considering almost everyone probably took an airplane to get there) and global warming spokesman Al Gore (or A-ru Go-a in katakana) made a guest appearance:
in the form of a snow statue. He was on the same block as most of the Japanese cartoon character effigies. At least he was there.
After 12 blocks (really more like 24 beacuse we went up and down both sides) we were cold and in need of some more refreshment, having skipped a real dinner in favor of the yummies on a stick. Where does one go when they need snacks and warmth? Karaoke of course!! Several beers, a platter of fried goodness and many, many horrible renditions of songs that were once great later, we called it a night.
Day 2
Off to a bright but not too early start, we hopped on the bus to Satoland. Designed primarily with children in mind, Satoland was basically a snow covered field about 40 minutes outside of the city where a smattering of snow themed amusements had been set up. There were a few slides, a maze, another stage, children's dig-in-the-snow-for-treasure areas and more food, but the best part was the build your own mini "ra-vu" daruma. The snowman building also had the shortest line. The lines at the other attractions prevented us from going on them. I am pretty sad that I missed going down the big snow slide on an intertube. Maybe next year?
The slide I didn't get to go down. Harumph. I think my age regressed back to my shoe size while at Satoland.
The field of mini-snowmen!!! Chou kawaii!!
After ooooing and ahhhhing over the work of others, Jamie, Hannah, Allison and I set to work on our own. At first we wanted to make one with snow boobs, but since this was a family venue, we decided on a cute mouse instead for the Lunar New Year (I just added that last bit.) Getting started was a bit tricky (the building committe was 3/4 Arizonan, Californian and Hawaiian after all) but after seizing control of a jug of water to help pack the powdery snow into the large mixing bowls they gave us to use as molds, we ended up with this:
It was a bit hard to leave him behind when we had to leave Satoland for the next destination. We hopped another very crowded bus back into the city and got off at the stop for the train station. We followed the signs down some stairs, and then some more stairs, and some more stairs and came out in the middle of a huge underground shopping mall! What? After battling our way through the crowds and past the temptations of sales at our favorite stores (although we did have to stop for ice cream--c'mon Hokkaido is famous for its dairy products) we finally made it to the train for Otaru.
View from the train. Really lovely. We even saw some ocean out the opposite side.
Otaru is known for two things: its canal and glassblowing. We went to see both. During the Snow Festival, the canal is lined with what can best be described as giant snow luminaria. People built lanterns and altar-like structures in snow and then light candles in them when it gets dark.
Otaru Canal, pre-darkness.
Snow lanterns, also pre-darkness. These were outside of the Otaru Brewing Company.
Along the canal, after dark. Really crowded, a bit slippery and very difficult to photograph.
Away from the canal is a street filled with glass shops. They are filled with some beautiful pieces, and an over abundance of sickeningly cute, ultra-mini glass animals. While the below isn't exactly an animal per-say, I think it fits in with the theme of this post better.
Like the sculptures in Odori Park, only the complete opposite, the scale of this snowman is a bit hard to determine from the photo. I would say that the card in front of him is written in 10 or 11 pt font. They were soooo small.
And while Otaru isn't exactly known for them, it is home to some very impressive icicles. I still think real icicles look fake. To me, "icicles" are fancy Christmas lights that look oh so snazzy hanging from the eaves of a stucco house.
Day 3
Day 3 was a bit rushed, trying to cram in last minute attractions before joining what felt like all of Japan at the airport. Allison and I sleepily stumbled around the city before breakfast because I wanted to see the clock-tower (not to be confused with the TV tower with a clock.) The clock tower is a big draw for Japanese people; one guy was even taking a film of the stationary building. I am not sure what all the commotion was about, but thought "when in Sapporo..."
The clock tower and...
...its plush likeness for sale at the airport.
All around the city we saw these "layer cakes" of snow along the edges of the streets that had been plowed. Some were really big, others not very impressive. I think this one was in the middle somewhere.
Sapporo Eki with its huge underground shopping mecca.
The crowded airport. A light snow was falling, so a lot of flights were delayed. Thankfully ours wasn't one of them, but we still had plenty of time to kill.
So we ate lunch. Pasta with creamy crab sauce. Sapporo/Hokkaido is famous for kani and this was my last change to eat some. And it was perfect...hardly resembling the animal it came from and any seafood-y flavor was drowned in the creamy sauce. Yummy. In a side note, check out the size of the water glass--not thimble sized!!
A very cool weekend to be sure. I need another vacation just to recover.
1 comment:
that was super intense. i felt like i was walking through lots of japanese snowmen. if i had been there i don't know if i could have stopped myself from destroying them all by stomping while making godzilla jokes. also, if you think that was fun, you should have a killzog fight in 10 foot deep snow drifts. great fun!
Post a Comment